Brisbane lord mayor Graham Quirk has faced questions from Labor councillors over the choice of a French sports consultancy by the Council of Mayors for South-East Queensland to compile a $62 billion infrastructure plan.

The People Mass Moving study was released in January by SEQ Mayors, of which Cr Quirk is the chairman, and detailed a 20-year infrastructure plan to prevent gridlock and link south-east Queensland into a comprehensive network of rail and road.

Cr Quirk was asked why a French sports and entertainment company had been contracted to produce an infrastructure report.Credit:Bradley Kanaris

At Brisbane City Council’s first meeting back for the year on Tuesday, Labor opposition leader Peter Cumming questioned why French company Lagardère Sports was contracted through its specialist company Event Knowledge Services.

The Council of Mayors is pushing for an Olympics bid for the region in the future, with the $62 billion infrastructure roadmap a critical part of that bid.

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In January, Cr Quirk said the Olympics bid could not go ahead if the infrastructure projects described in the report were not picked up.

Asked by Cr Cummings why a sports events company had undertaken a major public transport study, Cr Quirk said EKS had subcontracted the compilation of the report to SMEC, a specialist engineering company.

Cr Quirk said the People Mass Movement study was more a collection of multiple other federal, state and council reports than a completely fresh study, and the people who had compiled it were “very suitably qualified”.

“Any attempt to remove its legitimacy, I think, would be a very bad move,” Cr Quirk said.

“It is a compilation of reports from across a range of government sectors, it was the first time that those reports had been brought together under a single platform.”

Cr Quirk agreed that a surface view of the companies would find EKS “riddled” with a sports background, but the people involved in the creation of the report were experts in their field and he had “absolute confidence” in the report.